The Ghost Blimp – Ernest Cody And Charles Adams

The riddle of the ghost blimp has baffled authorities since 1942 and nobody has been able to explain the strange circumstances of it’s crew’s disappearance……

A Foggy Sunday Morning

It was a fog riddled morning in San Francisco in 1942 and the country was deep within it’s war with Japan. There were big worries about the western coast of the states being hit by Japanese submarine attacks. Due to this fact many different coastal defenses were put in position as security.

One of these daily defense procedures involved a L-8 blimp patrolling the coastal areas to locate and report on possible Japanese submarines. You cannot really compare a blimp to any other sort of military airship – it’s basically a balloon!

It’s shape is kept in place by nothing more than air – there is no real structure to keep everything in place.

On this Sunday the blimp set out on it’s patrols only to be spotted about a couple of hours later out of shape and out of control. There were sightseers on the beach who noticed the deflating craft and tried their best to control it by it’s loose ropes.

This was all in vain as the beach goers watched the vessel crash into the side of a cliff killing off both it’s engines. Now just a floating wreck it continued to travel aimlessly over the bay area.

Where Are The Crew?

The blimp finally came to rest after it hit a load of electrical cables in Daly City. The shocked public all dropped what they were doing and ran to help the blimp’s crew…..they found nobody on board!

Almost at once the theories started pouring out….

Maybe the men had jumped out

Maybe there had been a fight among crew members and they’d fallen out

Maybe they were scared and abandoned the blimp to go AWOL

Maybe they were smuggling a young lady love out of the country

Maybe a Japanese sub had captured them……

You see where this is going…..and still goes on today!

The Ghost Blimp

When all theories on the crew were exhausted the rumors started to turn upon the vessel itself. The problem was that this blimp was no ordinary blimp – it lived a very different life before the war.

Claims that the blimp was not up to standard were soon thrown out as the vessel had worked through serious storms as a Goodyear advertiser. It had never had any serious problems when it was finally turned over to the army for the war effort.

The task was no different to any other day that foggy Sunday – they took off at 6 am to complete the first of the four and a half hour flights they would complete that day.

The crewmen Ernest Cody and Charles Adams are the only ones who knew what happened next. The strangest part of the mystery is why neither of the men decided to radio for any help during whatever crisis they were experiencing. When the blimp crash landed it was reported that the radio was in perfect working order….

If you have any thoughts or theories on the ghost blimp we would love to hear them. Please leave any additional information or contributions in the comment section below.